March 2018 Pediatrics

Each month, we hand-search 87 top journals in pediatric speech–language pathology for the newest articles relevant to Pediatric SLPs. From a stack of 100+ articles per month, we narrow it down to those immediately applicable to clinical practice, and review them here! Read more about our process here.

This new study synthesized the available research on direct teaching strategies that support symbol learning and aided language expression for AAC users, and found four strategies they identify as “potentially effective...”

Kindergarten is full of instructional verbs, those “used during instruction for the purpose of directing student engagement with academic content and concepts.” When children enter school, they are bombarded with these verbs as teachers give explanations, ask questions, and provide instructions. If kids don’t understand what teachers are asking them to do, it can affect their engagement, their learning, and their success...

The authors of this study looked at the evidence, identified the most effective current practices, and designed anew theory-driven intervention package to improve reading outcomes for those at-risk poor readers...

How do you measure progress in children with phonological disorders? Do you measure the child’s speech sound inventory, calculate percent consonants correct (PCC), use overall intelligibility measures, or use probes you created? A combination of these? The authors of this study conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine which outcome measures were more sensitive to changes in children’s speech over time...

Phoneme collapsesounds like a linguistic catastrophe, and in some ways, it is. A phoneme collapse means a child substitutes a single phoneme for multiple (sometimes 10 or more!) phonemes. This study examined the effectiveness of the Multiple Opposition Approach...

The authors of this study crafted a peer-mediated intervention for a small group of high-school aged “passive communicators” with ASD. They picked four “focus students” who struggled with initiating and maintaining conversations, along with 16 peer mentors...

The researchers behind this study found a group of children ages 5–8 with a diagnosis of autism and fewer than 20 spontaneous words, and examined the effect of a targeted intervention focused on symbolic play...

How can we make therapy more functional and natural for children with autism? The authors of this study suggest that sibling-mediated interventions could be effective. They put in place a relatively simple, evidence-based language intervention to increase spontaneous language production...